The Thing Itself (37 page)

‘Perhaps it’s not like that back at the beginning of the whole thing.’

‘The Seventeen.’ He exhaled, as if uttering a magic charm word. ‘The real holy grail would be to go back
before
twenty seventeen. What wide eyes people would have! How amazed they would be! How they would pester us for tales of the miraculous future!’

‘I know it can’t be done. But you could go back
to
the Seventeen, couldn’t you?’

‘I can’t,’ said Attar. ‘My machine has a period range of thirty years. I’ve come back as far as I can with it.’

‘So buy a new machine! Oh!’ si said, realising shis error. ‘But I suppose you wouldn’t be synced to that.’

‘Maybe the people who import beef from my time could also import new machines? I don’t know if that would work. No, I can’t go back to the Seventeen.
You
could, though.’

There was something hungry in Attar’s voice as he said this, and for the first time Adonais felt a shiver of suspicion. ‘You want me to give up everything, and dive back into time.’

‘You could go back to the Seventeen – or just after. You could speak to people who were there!’

‘Many of them are still alive today. I could just go and find them, speak to them, without the bother of time travel.’

‘Of course. But they’d be
old
. If you went back, you could travel hard up against the limit and speak to people for whom it was fresh in their memory!’

‘And then? Come back to now, and tell you all about it? Become a Ghost?’

He nuzzled shim a little. ‘I’m teasing,’ he assured shim.

Si felt like crying. Really, tears moistened shis eyeballs. And si realised why: it was because si
wanted
it. Not to see what the world of 2017 was like, with shis own eyes, but to become a Ghost, to align shimself with Attar. The two of them could fade together as the quantum storm split the cosmos over and over again, pierced by decision trees like Saint Sebastian by arrows. It was an intensely romantic thought. Si grasped his shoulder, and for a moment forgot shimself. Si felt shis fingers sink into his flesh, as into fresh dough, and with a yelp si pulled free.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, in the darkness. ‘It doesn’t hurt me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ si replied; and just like that the whole edifice of romantic sacrifice and doomed love dissipated.

They slept, and in the morning made love again. For breakfast Attar ate from his supplies and Adonais fixed shimself some eggs and coffee. They spent the rest of the morning flâneuring the city, or trying to: military checkpoints blocked the main roads into town and, although the sounds of gunfire were sporadic and distant, and the drones flying past all seemed to be official, Adonais didn’t feel very safe. At eleven a vast rumble and a faraway avalanching sound indicated that the Shard had been blown up from beneath. They sat on a park bench and watched the fat pillar of smoke jack-beanstalk its way, slow-motion, into the sky. ‘It’s hard to be sure,’ Attar told her, ‘since quantum effects play tricks on the earlier records of returnees. But I think that originally killed nearly two thousand people.’

‘“Originally”,’ Adonais said, smiling.

‘It sounds so odd talking about it like that, doesn’t it? But you know what I mean. Before I left twenty sixty-nine the death toll was on record as four. That’s quite a few lives saved.’

‘Wouldn’t it be possible,’ Adonais mused, ‘to travel back and somehow prevent the explosion in the first place?’

‘Harder to do than you might think. Ghosts can talk to people, but drones won’t pay us no mind. And anyway, the building they erect on that site is one of the splendours of my London. I wouldn’t want to stop that ever being built.’

The sun came out from behind a cloud, and a watery December light glimmered on the snow. ‘You’re looking thinner,’ si observed. ‘Good lord, you
are
.’

‘I’ll be fine for a bit,’ he replied. ‘War tends to clump decision trees together. It’s like a rainstorm. Mostly it’s a light drizzle; this last half-hour was a downpour. But it’s back to drizzle now.’

Si hurried him home, as though getting indoors would somehow shield him. Si knew that was nonsense, of course. Walls and a roof were no protection. But si felt a little happier inside. They took an early lunch, and Adonais opened a bottle of wine si had been saving for a special occasion – though Attar of course couldn’t partake. Then they went to bed. Attar felt different under shis fingers: not exactly softer, but somehow less
there
. He had to finish himself off whilst si watched, and shis climax was muted compared to the previous night.

They lay side by side, layered over by the barcode shadows of her venetian blind. Outside, rifle fire rummaged around in a box of broken plates; fell silent; started up again.

Attar said: ‘Most of the people I know, back, eh, home – they’re looking forward to the year rolling into twenty seventy. It’s an exciting new dawn for them. No more time travel: the future entirely unknown. There are millennial cults who promise that the world will end as soon as the threshold is passed. Most people don’t think that, of course. But they do wonder what it’ll be like, living in a Ghost-less age. Nothing but historical records, and people’s memories, to connect us to the past. No knowledge of what happens next.’

‘You make it sound exciting,’ si said.

‘I used to think so,’ he said. His voice was fainter. ‘I was looking forward to the untrammelled future. Really, I was. And then I thought:
there are other ways of knowing what the future will be than experiencing it
. But that’s not true of the past. Because there’s this difference between the to-come and the always-gone. Because tomorrow is always, pretty much, like today. But yesterday is profoundly different, because it’s gone and can never come back. Or at least,’ he laughed, lightly, ‘that’s how it’ll be in twenty seventy. And who knows, thereafter for ever. And ever. And I saw that my chance to go back was about to slip away, so I took it and … here I am.’

Adonais was silent for a long time. Then si said: ‘What was her name?’

Attar breathed deeply and exhaled. ‘Shis name was Dahlia.’

Oh! ‘Did si … die?’

‘Si finished with me first. Then si went and died,’ he said. ‘I went back, and once I did that
it had always been the case
that I was haunting my own fucking love affair. I apologise for the bad language.’

‘It’s OK,’ si said.

‘There’s little so crass as Ghosting yourself. And once I had done it, in my moment of weakness, well then: of course si dumped me. What else could si do? What a horrid knot. God I miss shim!’ He sniffed noisily, and took a series of deep breaths. And then he was crying, and Adonais lay there, trembling with the shock of his sorrow, and the frustration that si couldn’t simply hold him tight and comfort him. After a while the sobs died. ‘Si was a daredevil and a wild thing – completely unlike you!’

‘Well,’ said Adonais. ‘Not
completely
.’

He laughed, briefly. ‘But in shis attitude to life. But si fell to shis death climbing in East Asia. They didn’t even think to tell me for a week – I was just some old boyfriend. I found out online, quite by chance. And after that twenty seventy didn’t look so appealing. So I bought a machine and went back to see shim again, and as soon as I did it I knew I’d been stupid. There’s a reason sane people choose not to travel back into their own lives.’

‘So you came here.’

He shifted in the bed, turning towards shim. ‘It wasn’t just selfishness. I really did think I might as well do some good with my life. And yesterday, I warned six people about the building. The one that blew up. Two of them told me to leave them alone, but I don’t know, maybe they heeded my warning after I had gone. The other four thanked me. And I met
you
!’

‘I’m glad we met,’ si admitted. Si felt like weeping, but held back. Holding shimself together was what si was good at, after all.

Si heard him rubbing his face with the palms of his hands, vigorously enough to make an odd squelching sound. Then he said: ‘What do
you
think happened in the Seventeen?’

‘It’s well known, isn’t it?’ si replied.

‘Oh no, hardly at all. I mean, obviously, we know that that’s when time travel was actualised. And we know that that originary trip was a hard bounce back thirty-one years give or take. And that it set up the equal and opposite harmonics in time. And the device itself, we know where
that
came from – the Institute. But the actual event is still largely a matter of mystery.’ He stopped. ‘I’m babbling. I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t need to apologise to me,’ si said, in a soft voice.

‘I sound like I’m trying to nag you into going back. But it wouldn’t do any good. Plenty of people have gone back to the limit-line – and you’re always a second
after
the main event. Belatedness is the condition of creatures like us. I think.’ Then he said, his voice cracking a little, ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’

Si didn’t want to reply that si felt the same way, for fear of unleashing a storm of weeping from shis own breast. When it came to tears, Adonais had the fear that once you start, why would there ever be a reason to stop? Si touched him, as gently as si could.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘is the last day of the Time War! And after that, it’ll be about building a land fit for heroes and heroines.’

‘Well,’ si said. ‘We know how that goes!’

They slept. The next morning was a bright, cold, crisp day. Adonais didn’t feel like breakfast, just black coffee. Si went for a shower, and when si came back Attar was gone. Si slumped into the sofa, caved-in at finding herself unexpectedly alone. Si concentrated on calming shimself. Abandonment is so central a terror, so defining a feature of human emotional growth, it takes only a very little thing to summon it out of its lair.

But he hadn’t gone. He was still there, by the window – nearly invisible, as the light streamed right through him. He was a man-shaped glass of light. Si gasped to see him, at once relieved and horrified. ‘What happened?’

‘I went back home for a while,’ he said, and his voice was so faint it could barely be heard.

‘Oh good lord, Attar! It’s – drained you.’

‘There’s no way,’ he creaked, ‘except that you sweep out a thirty-year period of quantum decision trees – there
and
back is sixty. It does tend to dilute you.’

Si came over to him, but didn’t dare touch him. The slightest touch would go straight through him. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted to find out what happens to you,’ he said. ‘I was lying there, in bed, listening to the water in the shower cascading off you, and I thought:
I can’t bear not knowing
. I knew it would diminish me, but I couldn’t stand the thought that you might die today, or tomorrow. I had to know. So I went and checked the records.’

‘Did you have to go so
far
?’

‘It makes little odds. Besides, I needed to go to a time when I know people. To ask them to run the records check. I can’t interact with computers, as I am now.’

‘O my poor wanderer!’

‘It wasn’t hard to trace your records, or the ones that are public. You do well! You’re still alive in twenty sixty-nine. Beyond that, obviously, I don’t know. But that’s a relief to me – that you’re part of the rest of this whole period.’

It was a strangely disorienting sensation, to have the parameters of shis life laid out like this. Si put shis wrist to shis mouth, and sucked at the skin, an old nervous tic si had largely managed to overcome. ‘Thanks to you,’ si said, her voice wobbling. ‘Thanks to you saving my life.’

‘I couldn’t bear the not-knowing,’ he said, pulling a ghastly face. Then he perked up. ‘But now I
do
know. I needed to know that you’ll be safe. There’s nothing more important to me, that knowledge. Because I love you.’

‘And I love
you
,’ si said. And then it was time for crying, but it didn’t go on as long as si feared it might. Afterwards si felt cleaner, emotionally; but no happier.

It was the last day of the Time War. And by evening the whole city was celebrating, and fireworks were going off, and conga lines were dancing through the snowy streets. That night, Attar had to sleep under his own blanket – a filigree sheet that did wonders (he said) with heat retention, and which he had carried with him in his backpack. The duvet was heavy enough to sink right through him. The next day he jumped a little too high, and when he came down his feet went through the carpet. He pulled himself out, gingerly, and went about the apartment as if walking over eggshells.

They spent the evening talking, watching television. Adonais laughed longer and louder than si could remember doing since si was a child. Attar ate more than his ration of food out of his backpack, ‘Might as well gorge myself,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow,’ Adonais told him, ‘I’ll order meat and vegetables from that speciality shop. We’ll have a proper feast!’

‘It’s a deluge-y night, this one,’ he said. ‘I know, because I’ve passed through it three times now. The end of a war, you know. Decision trees grow thicker at such a time.’

They went through to the bedroom. Rather than touch one another, they took turns blowing air on to their naked bodies. Finally si slept, and dreamed of a wide open white space, where all the souls were gathered. And the space was defined by light, and each soul was perfectly transparent, like one of those species of fish that lives in underwater caves far away from the sun: perfectly transparent hearts and stomachs, lungs and livers, all visible by the faint shimmer they made as they moved. The light was all around them, warm as a summer’s day, clear and bright and clean as a winter dawn. Attar was there, purified even beyond the way he had been. Si was there too, as transparent as he was. In the dream, it was just the two of them, although there were many other souls all about them. And they were standing on a perfectly white plane, like the Arctic ice pack, cleared of all rubble and dunes and smoothed flat. The light was behind them both, and si noticed that the two of them were casting long shadows, but that the shadows were rainbow-coloured, and it was the most beautiful thing si had ever seen.